Progressive Geographies

Martin Mahony

Global geopolitics have conventionally been conceived of in terms of the horizontal actions and interactions of territorially-bounded nation states. However, critical geographers have recently started giving consideration to ‘vertical geopolitics’, drawing greater attention to the spatial exercise of power in a dimension which cannot conventionally be discerned from a flat political map of the world.

Vertical geopolitics have figured prominently in the news recently, particularly as new technologies of surveillance and violence have challenged conventional orderings of vertical territory (such as the notion of sovereign ‘airspace’). In particular, the military use of drones – or unmanned aircraft – for the purposes of intelligence-gathering  and assassination has quite radically altered the political geographies of modern warfare. Meanwhile, the WWF’s recent announcement that drones will be used to help protect wildlife from poachers marks an interesting development in the sky-bound surveillance of the global environment.

Climate change offers an fascinating window through…

This week it was announced that the TED talks will be moving from California to Vancouver in March 2014 – Mayor Gregor Robertson supposedly saw this as a sign that ‘we’re breaking through in thought leadership’ (sic) – so this may be a good time to announce something different (particularly for those, like Nathan Jurgenson, who are leery of the TED bandwagon).

The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC plans to host six International Roundtable Discussions next year in Vancouver; the outline call is below, and you can find more details here, and details of our other international programs here.

Big Ideas. Time and space to explore them. The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia will host six International Roundtable Discussions each year for scholars from the international community and Canada to come together in the pursuit of knowledge…

Colin Koopman, Genealogy as Critique:Foucault and the Problems of Modernity, Indiana University Press, Series: American Philosophy

Publication date: 2/25/2013
Format: paper 362 pages
ISBN: 978-0-253-00621-9

Author’s blog

Description
Viewing Foucault in the light of work by Continental and American philosophers, most notably Nietzsche, Habermas, Deleuze, Richard Rorty, Bernard Williams, and Ian Hacking, Genealogy as Critique shows that philosophical genealogy involves not only the critique of modernity but also its transformation. Colin Koopman engages genealogy as a philosophical tradition and a method for understanding the complex histories of our present social and cultural conditions. He explains how our understanding of Foucault can benefit from productive dialogue with philosophical allies to push Foucaultian genealogy a step further and elaborate a means of addressing our most intractable contemporary problems.

Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What Genealogy Does
1. Critical Historiography: Politics, Philosophy & Problematization
2. Three Uses of Genealogy: Subversion, Vindication & Problematization